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dibber25

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Posts posted by dibber25

  1. Good train watching from the end of the Skywalk (adjacent to CN Tower) - see picture below - but its all passenger trains. There's a footpath close to the line side all the way to the GO Transit sidings. Credit Valley model shop is well worth a visit but its a bus ride and then a 20-minute walk from where the bus stops. I last did it in 2018 but I think I'm too old (at 75) to attempt it now. There's usually several vehicles and locos to be seen parked around the John Street roundhouse and the preserved railway out at Uxbridge is worth a visit (a bus ride out from the city) but pick a day when trains are running. (CJL)

    P1190655.JPG

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  2. I remember the reversed grey/blue Pullmans that were done for the 'Golden Arrow' and how the Southern's revision of them went down with at least one member of the BR Design Panel! Furious wouldn't cover it. It has to be remembered that this was THE CORPORATE IMAGE, standardised branding to be applied to everything regardless of whether or not it was appropriate (think horrible straight lines between blue and yellow on round-nosed 'Warships'). That the Southern not only changed it but re-introduced lining and a non-standard font, went down like lead balloon in an era when 'good design' was more about avant-garde style and uniformity than practicality. I always thought they got away with  reversed blue grey on the Met-Camm Pullmans but definitely not on older cars or the erstwhile 'Blue Pullman' DMUs where the grey looked insipid and was allowed to get filthy - something which the old Pullman Car Company would not have tolerated. (CJL)

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  3. 7 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

    The original image may, at the moment of exposure, have indeed been BR green, but emulsion differences - Kodak, Fujichrome and Agfa all rendered differently, just as Canon, Sony and Nikon sensors do - age-driven deterioration, digitising and differences among monitors and PCs mean colours can never be relied upon with such a long chain of reproduction, sadly. 

    Plus, as has been said a million times, you can't use the real paint on a 1:76 model because it won't look right. It will look way too dark. You have to interpret the colour and as none of us see colours quite the same, what looks right or OK to one person will look wrong to another. Add to that the fact that you're working off paint swatches about 2in by 1in that represent the paint that's available to the Chinese factory  - and anyone who ever decorated their house knows how paint swatches don't always match what's in the tin....... (CJL)

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  4. On 30/07/2022 at 12:18, The Stationmaster said:

    A further thought and I wonder if the book addresses it (I'll maybe find out when I've got a copy)?   Why was the line built to broad gauge?  The West Cornwall was a 'narrow gauge' - in GWR terms - railway and only the main line from Penwithers Jcn to Penzance was converted to mixed gauge, the various freight branches such as Newham remained narrow gauge.  The only advantage I can see in laying broad gauge on the St Ives branch is that it would have allowed through working of broad gauge vehicles  beyond Truro and then much further east.  So were the GWR after the fish traffic at a time when St Ives was Cornwall's busiest fishing port?

    It was surely all about the fish - particularly mackerel - which initially couldn't be sold more than a few miles from the home harbour as it went off so quickly. The railway enabled mackerel to be sold in London and surely St. Ives, the big mackerel-fishing harbour, would have wanted to be part of that. (CJL)

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  5. It was Isambard Brunel who was involved in the flooding of the Thames tunnel. He became ill as a result of ingesting filthy Thames water. Sent to Clifton for the fresh air and to recuperate, he got involved in the competition to design a bridge over the Avon (which led eventually to his suspension bridge) and while at Bristol he got roped in to work on the docks and from that the proposed Bristol-London railway. I have often wondered if the kidney disease which eventually killed him was also rooted in that original Thames tunnel flooding accident. (CJL)

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  6. Steam World magazine featured:

    Cheltenham-Andover (MSWJR) in December 2021

    Tiverton Junction-Hemyock in January 2022

    Oxford-Fairford in March 2022

    Banbury & Cheltenham Direct in July 2022

    Chippenham-Calne in August 2022

    and will feature:

    Stratford-Honeybourne-Cheltenham (photo-feature) in September 2022

    Gloucester-Ross-Hereford in October 2022

    (CJL)

     

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  7. On 26/06/2022 at 14:13, Pacific231G said:

    Ugh, almost as bad as Cassandra Crossing.

     

    Not this post in particualr but for heaven's sake. Patrick Barkham, a freelance journalists who writes for the The Guardian (normally on natural history) has put together a fairly light-hearted list of twenty films set on trains - presumably his own favourites- and some people here turn it into a culture war. I'm surprised nobody has yet described him as a "woke lefty"  for leaving out one or two films.

    It does seem that The Guardian's very existence is like a red rag to a bull- How dare any newspaper be allowed that doesn't support the present shower in power. I wonder if an equivalent list would have invoked the same response if it had been in the Daily Telegraph?

     

    Bhowani Junction wasn't set on a train but it was also, unfortunately, not really very good and certainly not a patch on the book (which is well worth reading).  

    I haven't read a newspaper since the 1970s and the only thing that might make me buy one is if I need to light the fire. So I have no axe to grind for or against any of them. Fact is, 'lefty', 'righty' or whatever, the Guardian's list was not much cop. Why do you need to bring politics into it? (CJL)

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  8. Gosh! Here's me opening a thread about the East-West rail link in order to read about a railway and I get a whole load of pontificating about global warming. Thought I was going to read something interesting - learn something I didn't already know. Well, that's another ten minutes wasted. Yes, I do care about global warming - not that I can do much about it - but apparently there'll be less global warming if I sit in the back of the aeroplane. That's OK - never flown business class anyway. (CJL)

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  9. 13 hours ago, Liam said:


    I’m not sure it’s done to appease American audiences, but Bobbie certainly makes a big deal about the waste of ingredients. The evacuee children might not have been in such a position where they feel freedom (and perhaps frivolity) in the kitchen since the war started. 

     


    Well, I don’t imagine the kids were given free reign of the goods yard. The final scene is very well done in my opinion; it may mimic Bobbie stopping the train from the landslide, but it also replicates the length that someone is prepared to go to in order to prevent danger to people. At one point the train was likely not stopping, so Thomas rushed to the four foot to ensure the train stopped. If no attempt to stop the train was made then you would have had a black American soldier subject to an unjust court martial, when all he’s done is tried to escape the racist abuse of the senior officers and MPs of his own army. 

    I wasn't suggesting that the train shouldn't have stopped and I certainly did not relate the stopping in any way to what might have happened to the black soldier. I was merely criticising the manner in which it appears to stop with a juddering halt like a sports car, which, if it had been for real, would certainly have run the child down. My criticism is that it re-inforces the (apparently widely-held) misconception that trains can stop on a sixpence. (CJL)

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  10. Saw it this afternoon. Firstly, we need to realise it's made for a 2022 audience not a 1970 one. I enjoyed it but wouldn't be rushing back to watch it again and again (I watch the original every few months). It's big issue is that it lacks the charm and gentle humour of the original but it's watchable enough. With my 'railway enthusiast' hat on, there's some rolling stock that's too modern (BR Mk1s) and there's some obvious vinyl LMS stickers over the BR crests on Bahamas and the '4F'. Sadly, some continuity is lost because The Three Chimneys has been modernised since the original film and presumably wasn't suitable. So the Three Chimneys in the new film is clearly the doctor's house from the original - that is The Bronte Parsonage Museum at Haworth. Minor nitpick - there's some throwing about of flour in the kitchen. This is common in almost every Hallmark movie involving kids and seems to be something which American audiences must like. In England, facing the hardships of war, such waste would surely have been unthinkable. Kids trespassing on railway lines is largely avoided this time until the 'last reel', when the stopping of the military train is presumably meant to mimic Bobbie and the landslide scene in the original. That, with its reversed projection, was dodgy. This version is downright bad. (CJL)

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  11. On 20/07/2022 at 17:04, 41516 said:

    From the thread title alone, my mind went to Dowlais... (sorry if it's heading OT)

     

    10421420063_69506549d4_c.jpgOCT 74B Shunter crossing Dowlais High Street, September 1974 by Andy Kirkham, on Flickr

     

     

    Edit  - another of Great Yarmouth. 

     

    great yarmouth D22xx Swan yard coal depot shunt

     

    Never mind the trains - the dream car I wanted but never got, a metallic blue Sunbeam Rapier. I looked at several but rust was always the problem. In the end the one I bought was green but wasn't a good buy and had a load of problems but I loved it. A great car. (CJL)

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  12. 4 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

    There was a period when the prefixes GE and NE were applied to passenger carrying stock by the GE Lines management and the North Eastern Region - this would have been c.1961/62.  In the back of my mind I've a feeling - from ageing memory - that the AM9 units vehicles had GE prefixed vehicle numbers from new.

    I think you're right. I seem to recall official pics of the Clacton units with GE prefixes - probably the only place I would have seen them. Edited to add photo from 1963 Model Railway Constructor which appeared with scaled-up GAs of these 'state of the art' units. (CJL)

    GE Clacton unit.jpeg

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  13. 5 hours ago, John M Upton said:

    The Cassandra Crossing was an odd one, an A List cast saddled with a Z List script that seemed to have been reheated from one of those highly improbable 1970's airport disaster movies.

     

    Worth watching for the litany of continuity errors (magically changing locos and stock formations on a train that never stopped) and then the extra four carriages of cannon fodder extras added at the front of the train just in time to protect the A List actors from dropping into the ravine...

    Wasn't that the thing where they 'contained' a deadly virus by dropping a train full of infected passengers into a river?!! My wife was a micro-biologist - she nearly choked watching it! (CJL)

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  14. 19 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

    How about 'Emperor Of the North'?  Very much set on trains which are a key part of the story and the 'social changes' aspect of it ought to appeal to The Grauniad although the violence might not.  i suspect that their film critic or whoever made the choices might not even have heard of it.

    Yes, takes a bit of nerve to watch it - especially as it is usually screened late at night. 'Narrow Margin' is also pretty violent so perhaps that's why it was not on the list. Was the very watchable - but truly awful - 'Unstoppable' on the list? If we eliminated all movies where the writer had not the first clue about how continuous brakes work, we'd have a very short list!! (CJL)

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  15. 5 hours ago, BR60103 said:

    chris:   I don't think Disney used the real General in the film.   I have an idea that some locomotives came from the B&O museum in Baltimore. I shall research further.

     

    Further: General and Texas were not in operating condition.  William Mason and Inyo were used. Yonah was played by Lafayette (replica) from B&O.

     

    Well, at least similar locomotives and a good attempt at historical accuracy in most respects. So, was the real General used in the Buster Keaton film? Perhaps I'm getting confused. (CJL)

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  16. On 04/06/2022 at 14:17, Rugd1022 said:

     

    Only just noticed this thread, a very welcome model I'm sure! In the bottom pic, 10800 is sat in the old no.3 bay at the north end of Rugby Midland station and the brick building in the background is part of the original Midland Counties station, where the line from Wigston ran in.

     

    Quite what it's doing in the Leicester bays on milk tanks is worth further investigation perhaps, unless it's doing a shunt move to gain access to the Leamington line from no.5 and 6 bays (there was a milk siding at Dunchurch on the Leamington branch)

    Or is that a weed-killing train? When I worked at IA there was a picture of 10800 on the Brighton line, on a 'Merrymaker-type' trip - an excuse, perhaps, for anyone who wants an excuse to have this model on an SR layout. (CJL)

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  17. On 10/06/2022 at 09:57, D860 VICTORIOUS said:

    Hi all,

    I remembered I have the photo in the Middleton Press "Branch Lines of West London" book,thanks dibber25 for posting.Looks like W55992 even has the same headcode as the Heljan model...OT,but the book has only the briefest section on the railways of Greenford(my home town),something I'd like to find out more about,but that's for another time.

    I can vaguely remember these units mixed in with other DMU's,as 08221 has said,and somewhere in the vaults I have a colour print pic I took of one in the up bay at Southall,seem to remember Posties chucking mailbags in on some occasions before the unit spluttered off to Paddington.

    The main thing is,thank you to each of you who took the trouble to reply and share your knowledge and recollections,much appreciated.

    Neil.

    Like the rail buses and the 121/122s, the parcels cars were personal favourites of mine. I provided Martyn at Heljan with quite a lot of help on these and quite a few reference photographs so I suspect the 3A49 head code may be a result of this particular picture. The rail blue/white roof dome/yellow corridor blanking panel version and 'Scooby-do' with the lettering in the dirt were also from my references. Manufacturers go to great lengths to get these things right and it is always good to assist them. (CJL)

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